The Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance figured out that, as a percentage of personal income, the Wisconsin tax bite dropped from 12.18% in 2003-2004 (fiscal year 2004) to 12.13% in 2004-2005 (fiscal year 2005), which dropped our national rank from 6th to 8th. Shhh, don’t tell the tax-increasers in Madistan because that will cause them to redouble (again) their efforts to make us #1.
Before the rest of you break out the bubbly, there are several rather ugly caveats:
- First, the Census Bureau, which provides the numbers that WTA looks at, is about 2 years behind. Anybody care to guess what the FY2006 and FY2007 numbers will read?
- The WTA said in that press release, “The drop in rank was due primarily to increased taxes elsewhere, rather than reduced taxes here.” So, I’ll explore that.
- Both corporate income taxes (up from 0.41% of personal income in 2004 to 0.44% of personal income in 2005) and property taxes (up from 4.42% to 4.43% of personal income) went up faster than total income, which went up 6.54% (combining a 0.47% increase in population and a 6.04% increase in per-capita income; numbers collated by me from from the Census Bureau). In terms of dollars, corporate income taxes went up 14.77% while property taxes went up 4.94%.
- That rather-astonishing increase in total income masked increases in personal income taxes (4.07%) and sales taxes (3.26%).
- With inflation between July 2004 and July 2005 at 3.17%, and population growth at 0.47%, every major category other than sales taxes went up faster than the combined effects of inflation and population growth.
I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford a $3 billion tax increase between now and 2009.
Revisions/extensions (11:23 am 6/8/2007) – Since Blogger seems to be having an issue sending out pingback requests, others that picked up on this from here….
– Dad29, who points out that we’re also in the lower quintile of GDP growth
– Headless Blogger, who asks if 0.05% is significant (it’s $25 for somebody making $50,000, so it’s not exactly significant).
